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"Pick the cause before you pick the site you're gonna hack, and use a fuckin' spell checker!" --cDc, Defcon 7

I beg to differ

Perhaps you should take a look at the cover from Wired Mag from April 1997 and read the article that details exactly how the military is used Doom in training.

A quote from the Wired cover story:
Marine Doom shows how anxious the corps is to use nontraditional ideas for keeping its soldiers sharp. And it's not above picking up tips from the business and entertainment worlds. For example, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, the Quantico base commander, recently took his top officers to a stock trading floor to study how people behave in chaotic situations. "The military needs to borrow from the commercial sector," says Carl Builder, author of The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis. "The commercial sector is moving much faster, for instance, in this area of simulation technology. This is the kind of thinking that the military needs."

I beg to differ

Perhaps you should take a look at the cover from Wired Mag from April 1997 and read the article that details exactly how the military is used Doom in training.

A quote from the Wired cover story:
Marine Doom shows how anxious the corps is to use nontraditional ideas for keeping its soldiers sharp. And it's not above picking up tips from the business and entertainment worlds. For example, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, the Quantico base commander, recently took his top officers to a stock trading floor to study how people behave in chaotic situations. "The military needs to borrow from the commercial sector," says Carl Builder, author of The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis. "The commercial sector is moving much faster, for instance, in this area of simulation technology. This is the kind of thinking that the military needs."

There's a link in the wired article to "The Sordid Saga of Sex.com," in which the original registrant of sex.com claims that NSI transferred ownership of "sex.com" to a rather shady character, after recieving a forged letter approving the transfer. The article is here. Apparently the new owner is something of a crook. Sex.com supposedly pulls in $100 million annually...

Link to Wired article on Henry Masselin: Qua

There are plenty of places to get hosted besides mp3.com. I almost started a service myself, but didn't have the bandwidth to do so, or the resources to ship band CDs. However, there are lots of places like mp3.com which will host your music and some will sell cds.

CD Now is starting a program much like mp3.com set to open shortly.
CDuctive hosts indie artists.
eMusic may be able to help you, but they're pretty big.
Live365 will host 365mb worth of mp3s (in 56kbps encoding) and stream them 24/7 for you. Who says it can't be your own stuff..
Cruch Music is for British dance/techno musicians
Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) will definetly sign you, for a slight fee, but they can sell your music per track.
MusicMatch might sign you
WorldWideBands for those musicians around the globe.

For more info, check out a backissue of WIRED magazine, entitled "I Want My MP3". Right now it's a musicians market on the net.

This hit about a month and a half ago, from a widely publicised article in the Journal of Neuroscience. Here's Wired's article; a bit more technical is this abstract, complete with a few pretty pictures (I love Google). I'm sure Slashdot picked it up too.

One neat thing is that research hits published journals often years after the experiments were performed. I'm sure things have progressed much since the cat experiements were done.

Because, after all, the millenium is more than a year away.

(yes, I did read the article at wired, and I'm still saying this)

Actually, there was a very interesting article in Wired a while back about the Amish and technology. Very interesting - they're not completely anti-tech, but they very carefully, as a community, debate and analyze the effects of technologies before deciding whether to accept and apply them, and how.

For example, they might have phones, for emergency use - but install them in sheds or outhouses. Takes care of those telemarketer calls.

It's a very different notion of what's a "proper" use of technology from mine, but it is a very studied and considered one.

Actually, there was a very interesting article in Wired a while back about the Amish and technology. Very interesting - they're not completely anti-tech, but they very carefully, as a community, debate and analyze the effects of technologies before deciding whether to accept and apply them, and how.

For example, they might have phones, for emergency use - but install them in sheds or outhouses. Takes care of those telemarketer calls.

It's a very different notion of what's a "proper" use of technology from mine, but it is a very studied and considered one.

There are about 3000-6000 protesters in downtown Seattle, but 20,000 more people now at Memorial Stadium for a huge rally and parade. The parade planned for this afternoon expects between 20,000 and 50,000 marchers. My previous comment about "50,000 people by week's end" was wrong. Expect 50,000 people by this afternoon.

More info from Wired: Tear Gas Debuts at WTO.

To go along with this excellent essay:

an old wired article by Brian Eno

-nme!

Under the leadership of an executive-level council Acxiom administers a set of Fair Information Practices which include:

• Recognizing that consumers have the right to control the dissemination of information about themselves and providing an opt-out choice.
• Providing individual information products only to qualified businesses and professionals for legitimate business purposes.
• Actively supporting self-regulation and legislation through trade associations focused on consumer privacy including the Online Privacy Alliance, the Direct Marketing Association, the Internet Alliance, and the Individual Reference Services Group.

One of the U.S. market leaders in the mailing list surveillance industry, NLPS provides list surveillance and monitoring services to business-to-business and consumer list owners and mailers. The combination of Acxiom's data and sales and marketing capabilities with NLPS' monitoring services will provide significant new advantages for Acxiom's customers. For over 25 years mailers have relied on NLPS for quality and accurate monitoring.

Q: Can consumers choose to be removed from your databases?
A: Acxiom will be happy to remove an individual consumer's name from our marketing products if the individual does not wish to receive unsolicited marketing through the mail, from telemarketing or via e-mail. Consumers may request an Opt-Out Form by either leaving a message on our Privacy Hotline at 501-342-2722 or sending an e-mail to us at optout@acxiom.com.

Acxiom does not offer consumers the choice of removing their name from our reference databases, but does offer access to the non-public data in these files. These databases are only available to qualified businesses for lawful and ethical purposes. Acxiom will be happy to provide an individual with a copy of the non-public information we maintain in these databases for a fee of $5.00. Consumers may make a request for this information by either leaving a message on our Consumer Advocate Hotline at 501-342-2722 or sending an e-mail to us at consumerreport@acxiom.com.

Q: Does Acxiom honor suppression or Opt-Out lists from other sources?
A: Acxiom uses the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Mail Preference and Telephone Preference suppression files in the development of these databases. Acxiom also uses the State Attorneys General's Telemarketing Suppression Files and our internally built and maintained Opt-Out base.

That they know not what they do, that they don't realize what a Pandora's box they're opening now seems too easy an answer. They have scores of sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists at their beck and call. Is it possible that of the presumably many involved with creating this profile, none thought this might be a bad idea, or what the future implications might be, or what kind of precedent it may set?

So what? So what if... the FBI knows exactly what they are doing.

Perhaps I've seen one too many episodes of the x-files, but I think there is perhaps another explanation for this test and why it has been released to American AND Canadian schools. (Since when has the US Gov. cared about Canadian social issues anyway?)

This may well be a small piece to a very large picture. I can only see a portion, but who else has heard or seen things that are seemingly silly, stupid, even idiotic, but appear to be isolated events. How many of them actually fit together in some bizarre scheme that we as yet cannot comprehend?

Part of the picture involves this profile, or more specifically what affect this profile will have. Think about it. A simply test from a respected government agency for educators as an early warning system. Sounds more like a tagging system. Hmmm... Why apply labels to kids based on a number of factors largely out of their control, and for what little they do control they are generally ill prepared socially to deal with it at that point in their life. Bottom line. They are not yet what they may become, good or bad. But hey, let's force it on them anyway.

That brings me to Self-fulfilling prophecy. In Sociology 101 I learned about a concept called 'Self-fulfilling prophecy'. It's been 10 years since I took the class, but basically it claims that things like labels and names have certain behaviors associated to them, and by applying them to someone, that will be how an individual begins to define his identity. This identity begins to define his thoughts, and his thoughts define his actions and behavior. This behavior is categorized by some label and the whole thing comes full circle.

Last week the FBI had some ISP shut down the site of a guy who had made a movie showing the government causing a Y2K riot so that they could declare martial law. See Wired and Slashdot. For decades movies have shown government abusing its power... why this one? Why him? Perhaps because it hit too close to home for certain elements with this sort of thing in mind.

For months, I understand, the US has been preparing their National Guard for deployment in the event of some kind of Y2K disaster. Good planning to be sure, but let's face it, one word from the government and sand bags by a river bank quickly become tear gas canisters in the middle of a crowd.

I don't really know much about economics, so I let someone else describe the potential impact of this but recently I read that the government has recently given/sold/invested a ton of cash in/to the financial institutions to give them (and citizen) piece of mind. Source anyone? I appreciate the thought, but I can't believe it is a good idea to encourage people to remove their money by making it available for everyone to do so.

This is all off the top of my head, but let's recap...
Create a subculture of deviants from all the kids who fit the profile. That's a lot of kids. As a result of years of labeling, prejudice and discrimination, you have an army of intelligent, but socially undesirable people. Oh, did I mention that they're angry? Angry people tend to be apathetic about issues not directly involving themselves and are probably easier to shepherd than others. Control the majority and many of the minorities will follow suit. A government agency prevents the electronic mass distribution of film that describes a government plot, in an attempt to keep even the thought of such a thing from the masses. Out of sight, out of mind. The National Guard is on standby. Power failures, riots, same difference. The government purposely enables its citizens to hoard cash and thereby leaving large amounts of cash available for theft/loss/destruction, you pick.

Anyone else have a piece to add?

So... is it just me or is something is about to unfold... or is this all in preparation for something much bigger?

Hard to tell from the brief precis in Wired, but it looks like Dragon Systems has come out with speech-grepping software on the open market (demoed at Comdex).

Of course, hooking your laptop up to a radio scanner modified to get the wireless-phone channels and using this software to look for keywords related to, say, Congressional graft, as you stroll through downtown Washington at lunchtime, would be totally illegal. I certainly don't advocate any such thing; it would be wrong.

Might goose the folks putting barriers in the path of widespread crypto adoption, though. And maybe cast the Justice Department's calls for expanded wiretapping powers-- "because technology is eroding away our ability to lawfully intercept communications" -- in a slightly more skeptical light.

In the majority of cases, if not all, the use of frames can be replaced by nested tables. And there is an increasing trend to do this.

Using tables instead of frames will increase the number of potential users who can make sense of your website. If you have a frames based website, you should also provide a non-frames version out of consideration for people using a browser that doesn't support frames.

Anyone authoring a website with Frontpage (ugggh) will invariably have a frame based website when they don't need to. This means that a lot of mom and pop websites, as well as small commercial websites have frames.

Larger commercial sites are tending to not use frames unless they have a really good reason. Look at the source code for sites such as Oracle TechNet, Wired, and About.com for examples of sites that use tables over frames. Interestingly, Oracle Technet has only recently made the change and Oracle still uses frames.

Many commercial software packages for website design favour tables over frames. Macromedia Dreamweaver will do this I think, although their site uses frames.

Webmonkey has a good guide to how to construct frames, but the article does say
ask yourself: Do I really need frames at all? Most of the time, the answer is no. In my opinion, frames are only appropriate when you have a complex navigation structure going on - especially one that involves retaining a search query while reloading the search results (as in Cocktail or Net Surf Central).

At the end of the day the person you've hired has been asked to provide functionality into your existing web site, and while they shouldn't be stopped from making suggestions on how to improve your site, they do have a job to do. I'd be surprised if having frames actually prevents functionality being added.

Obviously Conde Nast had to try and discover what the market for the magazine was, and then work out how to sell advertising in it. This they appear to have done, because the last issue I bought was back up to a decent size... true there are a lot of ads, but that's how magazines make their money. It's a healthy sign if a magazine has lots of ads in it.

I think the content of WIRED is going to drift back to its old self... the article featuring close-ups of old computers that was in the last issue would not have appeared in the "thin" WIRED, and I doubt things like "InfoPorn" would have either. That they're doing this kind of stuff again is also a good sign.

Don't get me wrong... I'm no great WIRED supporter, and if they screw up then I stop reading, but they've obviously just been through a dodgy patch, and it would be a shame to see them disappear.

BYTE, on the other, was in a real state just before it left us, and it was almost a relief to see it put out of its misery!

Sounds like even within the genre cheesey made-for-tv disaster movies, it doesn't rank too highly.

-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

They claim that, for one thing, the movie is a bomb simply because it sucks. The preposterousness of the subject and the chance it might cause lusers, er, ordinary folk, to panic only makes it worse. Read the Wired article here.

Jack

Actually, they are very nearly as old as the net. PG was started in 1971.

This is what Michael S. Hart says. But is it true? In 1976 he was typing in the Declaration of Independence for the bicentennial, and he says that was the first text. In 1991 he had 12 texts online. By that time other sites had quite a lot more than that. The World Wide Web started in 1992.

See http://www.wired.com/wired/arch ive/5.02/esgutenberg.html for some history as told to one reporter by Hart. According to that article, in 1997, Hart refused to use the web, so who knows if he will ever read this to supply corrections.

Feb. 1997, Wired Magazine carried an article on Michael S. Hart and Project Gutenberg. http://www.wired.com/wired /archive/5.02/esgutenberg.html

Here is Denise Hamilton's insightful prediction at the end of the article: If he were any less obsessed, he would have given up a long time ago. Instead, he is doubling each year. But I also wonder how long the project can keep expanding exponentially. Unless Hart can draft reinforcements or hook up with a sponsor, eventually it probably will stall, and that's a shame.

Almost three years later, we are confronted with the same quandary. A socially useful project. Seems to be stalling because of lack of support. Give it some support, and it keeps stalling. Offer some advice, and it is refused. More passive-aggressive crying from a leader who will not lead. What to do now?

I suggest we all learn from Open Source movements and just do it ourselves. When PG started, computers and scanners and software and networks were very expensive and few knew how to use them. Now they are cheap and ubiquitous, and we need not depend on others to do this work for us, and we don't need to pay money for free books online, and we don't need to ask the government or corporations or anybody else to take it over and do it for us. We don't need to wait for Microsoft or anybody else to provide us with geewhiz technology to finally make it possible to read books online.

As one of the first online books put it, "The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

If we want to preserve the classic works of literature or other books we find important enough to leave for our grandchildren, then we should take responsibility ourselves. Spend $25 for a scanner, $70 for OCR software, learn to use them. Check out books from the library you like. Learn to OCR them and edit them into your favorite format. Put up a website somewhere--many sites are free, or somebody will put the books on their website for you. How much computer power is going to waste sitting on your desk?--could you use it to leave something behind, if not great software, if not a great book your wrote, then a great book that changed your life and needs to change the life of some kid in some other country?

Publish ebooks yourself, put your own name on them, be responsible for correcting errors yourself. Type in links to other web pages that have useful information. Do some research and share it with us online. Choose one author and put all of his books online in one place at your site.

What I am suggesting is no more than our realizing the value of the book culture vs. the TV culture in our society. In Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" (a book you will not find on the web) we learn of a time when books are banned because they make people unhappy. The few who are left who treasure books are forced to flee to the woods and memorize them in order to preserve them. They became the books, the authors. This is not a technological problem, it is a social one, and we bookpeople can do something ourselves about it. We can learn from the experience of the free software movement and from PG's sad history too. PG has been quite successful but faces an unceratin future. On the other hand, we need to take control of our own lives and publish our own books ourselves. We can do it!

For more on how we can engage in this communal project without necessarily feeding money to one organization, see Get Involved! at the UPenn On-Line Books Page.

Back in '97, Wired did a feature on PG. The original Gutenberg ftp site was hosted on a UIUC machine. I have some friends who were there at the time, and have regaled me with stories of what a pain in the ass the guy was. The FTP site that is alluded in this article by one Mark Zinzow was on a machine, mrcnext (which no longer exists but still has a DNS entry) adminned by a friend of mine at one point. Anyway, the point is, this article has a lot of interesting things to say about the Project and especially Michael Hart. Check it out.

--

Back in '97, Wired did a feature on PG. The original Gutenberg ftp site was hosted on a UIUC machine. I have some friends who were there at the time, and have regaled me with stories of what a pain in the ass the guy was. The FTP site that is alluded in this article by one Mark Zinzow was on a machine, mrcnext (which no longer exists but still has a DNS entry) adminned by a friend of mine at one point. Anyway, the point is, this article has a lot of interesting things to say about the Project and especially Michael Hart. Check it out.

--

> It get really really old... to see the same misinterpretation....

What's to misinterpret? In the wired article mentioned in the previous post, Gore is quoted as saying "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." OK, so he didn't say he invented it, but he certainly implies that he was there at the beginning and had an active (relevant) role in it.

To quote further from the same article, "In 1969, the Defense Department commissioned the ARPANET." "It would be eight more years before Gore would be elected to the US House of Representatives as a freshman Democrat"

The timelines aren't even close; you can't even give him the benefit of the doubt.

Gore is misleading the American public. There's just no other way to interpret it.

Sorry, you're wrong. There was a slashdot story about this. It referenced a wired story, which says that Gore said:

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

So far as Al Gore being relevant to its beginnings, I don't even understand what you mean by that.

Back when Wired was still worth reading, they ran a pretty good article called "The Making of the President 2000" (which is archived for free browsing on their Web site) comparing Al Gore's and Newt Gingrich's efforts to position themselves as the tech-savviest politico in preparation for the 2000 election. Of course, the article, which originally was published in the December 1995 issue, is a little dated; remember, this was back in the full flush of the Republican Revolution, when Gingrich looked like a revolutionary conservative leader and not a broken, slightly pathetic figure. But it's still worth reading for anyone interested in how Gore's ideas about tech developed to where they are today.

-- Jason A. Lefkowitz

Back when Wired was still worth reading, they ran a pretty good article called "The Making of the President 2000" (which is archived for free browsing on their Web site) comparing Al Gore's and Newt Gingrich's efforts to position themselves as the tech-savviest politico in preparation for the 2000 election. Of course, the article, which originally was published in the December 1995 issue, is a little dated; remember, this was back in the full flush of the Republican Revolution, when Gingrich looked like a revolutionary conservative leader and not a broken, slightly pathetic figure. But it's still worth reading for anyone interested in how Gore's ideas about tech developed to where they are today.

-- Jason A. Lefkowitz

But we still have many businesses (including the motion picture industry) which are still operating under the old industrial age rules. Those rules favor protecting property to preserve scarcity to help assign higher product value. That we can copy movies with no real overhead, threatens the scarcity, which in turns lowers the assigned value of the product. They see the need to try to protect their property, so that they can continue to retain value assigned to it. A great example of the extreme of this mindset was Disney (until recently) which not only protected their IP, but actually would take products off the market for extended periods of time to drive up the 'value' (by making the product more scarce).

The Electronic world compensates. Its just the beginning of the new economy, and what we are seeing is that the wired folks are starting to act in a new way. Notice the increase of attention regarding issues of intellectual property and privacy. Both of these issues have to transition to a new set of rules in this new economy and we have a conflict of the old-economy businesses and the new-economy public. Expect to see more of this for the next few years.

The popularity of DeCSS (in our community) and the proliferations of MP3s are just two examples of the new rules in action. DeCSS is a correction to the old rules, and MP3 is the principals of the new economy in action. Not that most people have any idea that this is going on. Like rules of any economy, they 'just make sense.' We like MP3s cause it just makes sense to distribute and collect music this way.

Of course, I could be just blowing smoke.

But we still have many businesses (including the motion picture industry) which are still operating under the old industrial age rules. Those rules favor protecting property to preserve scarcity to help assign higher product value. That we can copy movies with no real overhead, threatens the scarcity, which in turns lowers the assigned value of the product. They see the need to try to protect their property, so that they can continue to retain value assigned to it. A great example of the extreme of this mindset was Disney (until recently) which not only protected their IP, but actually would take products off the market for extended periods of time to drive up the 'value' (by making the product more scarce).

The Electronic world compensates. Its just the beginning of the new economy, and what we are seeing is that the wired folks are starting to act in a new way. Notice the increase of attention regarding issues of intellectual property and privacy. Both of these issues have to transition to a new set of rules in this new economy and we have a conflict of the old-economy businesses and the new-economy public. Expect to see more of this for the next few years.

The popularity of DeCSS (in our community) and the proliferations of MP3s are just two examples of the new rules in action. DeCSS is a correction to the old rules, and MP3 is the principals of the new economy in action. Not that most people have any idea that this is going on. Like rules of any economy, they 'just make sense.' We like MP3s cause it just makes sense to distribute and collect music this way.

Of course, I could be just blowing smoke.

evolt.org has a positive review of Napster here, with a walkthrough on how to use it. A couple of people have posted follow ups with some extra info.

As others have posted, Wired is reporting that the RIAA is suing Napster - because apparently alot of Napster traffic is made up of unauthorised music.

Alot of Internet traffic relates to illegal activites, etc, so err, let's sue it! ;p

http://www.wired.com/news/b usiness/0,1367,32559,00.html

DVD's can be copied because they use extremely weak encryption. Any widespread usage of legally binding digital signatures would require that the U.S. relax its export regulations -- unless, of course, we want the rest of the world to leave us behind in yet another way.

Pen-and-paper signatures are laughably weak. I once had a boss who asked me to forge his signature at work; he was out of the office knew that any scribble that I made on the paper would count. (For the record, I flat-out refused.)

-- Rene

Creeping elegance in app development... creeping totalitarianism in development of society.

As long as technology didn't threaten to empower the masses, Those In Power didn't worry too much about _true_ democracy. Freedom was a nice myth to perpetuate to keep the proletariat happy.

Now that technology could enable* such marvels as online voting, the elite (not 3l33t lest I confuse the script kiddies out there) and powerful are getting worried something might actually shift the balance of power and control (Cokie Roberts' reaction to the spectre of online voting is a prime example of this... how dare those uneducated workers threaten the Rich and Powerful!)

Expect more of this as the net threatens to replace centralized control (mainframe model) with a more "distributed" model of social governance.

-an expatriate 'merican, happy to be abroad.



*whether the apathetic american public will switch their sitcoms off long enough to actually learn something about current events and political developments is another question beyond the scope of this rant.

OK, I'm just wondering - how often are Yahoo going to be able to find out whether someone is using such a system? I mean, I could program a system to do that tomorrow - but unless I make the code available, nobody is gonna be any the wiser.

Of course - that is a real issue for the /.'s and other Open Source developers of the world, but for developers who are creating custom systems for clients, such a technique is surely impossible to detect.

Secondly - can they prosecute someone for using a program that contains such code, or does the patent only cover writing code to implement such a system in the first place?

Finally, can Yahoo use such a patent - originating in the US - against companies in other countries, or does the patent only cover US applications development?

Also intersting to note - Yahoo are currently being sued themselves over patent violation, Wired have the article.

One day in year 20xx, USS Windows, which is operated by Windows, encounters a Chinese warship which runs on Linux. Suddenly....

Sailor: "Sir, the computer said 'An illegal instruction is executed'!! The computer is not responding!!"

Captain: "Reboot it!!!"

The Chinese ship approaches the inoperative USS Windows.

Sailor: "Sir, the computer does not reboot!! The registry is corrupted!!"

Captain: "Reinstall Windows!!!"

Seriously, I don't agree with those who think it is a bad thing that Chinese government endorses Linux. We live in democratic countries. Why don't we choose presidents or prime ministers who mandates the use of open software, instead of spending tax money on propriety OS with propriety file formats? Why Chinese can do, and why we can't?

Yes, this is old news. The only thing I can find at the moment is on Wired but I remember Judge White saying (on techweb or cnet, probably) he would use it. Read the link: ATT used it, and it would get around those Appeals judges.
I keep hearing everyone say stuff about this case that's just wrong. Another thing is "What's the worst that can happen? Break them up?" NO. Answer: All of the above. Break up the company AND impose behavioral remedies. Joel Klein said "Let me make clear, we are not looking for any financial penalties. We're concerned with competition. This is not a penal action, and we're not going to seek monies.'' So a fine is out of the question. They probably will not send Bill Gates to jail, either. :-( But Microsoft will be subject to lawsuits from other companies, like the one currently filed by Caldera for potenially vast sums of money. And what about the Penal part - you can't let lawbreakers go unpenalized. Maybe another DOJ case?

John

I found this on the Wired News site - gives some more information on the subject: Your Rights Online: FTC Petitioned on Data Profiling

Basically, here's the gist: Broadcast companies could care less about broadcasting HDTV. For all their talk about drastically improving the quality of television, their eyes are on the really big asset they're sitting on: their spectrum.

First, a little history. (Sorry for the slight tangent, but bear with me :-) Unbeknownst to most people, network TV stations are the only companies in the country that get free transmission spectrum. This was done in 1932 (or sometime around then) when there were few other uses for the bandwidth and the government wanted to encourage broadcasting because they felt it would be in the public good to have universal access to this new communications medium. Since then, of course, that spectrum has become incredibly valuable, but the broadcasters continue to get it for free.

Enter HDTV. Using modern compression standards, broadcasters can fit the entire datastream of an HDTV picture into the same 6MHz T.V. channel currently used for NTSC. But broadcast companies started looking at it the other way around. Using modern compression standards, they could fit 6 NTSC channels into one spectrum slice. Or... they could fit 1 NTSC channel into 1/6 the slice, and use the other 5/6 slice for other services e.g. data transmission, cell phones, etc. After all, they're getting a full 6Mhz for free; if they can continue their current broadcasts (thereby continuing their current revenue) and add other profitable services without having to pay for the spectrum, why not?

Look at it this way: they could either use the 6Mhz to a) transmit 1 HDTV channel b) transmit 6 NTSC channels c) transmit 1 NTSC channel and a bunch of other services. It's clear that options b & c would be far more profitable than option a. This is why there is no one HDTV standard, but a whole spectrum of standards. Note how NTSC defines one picture standard, but HDTV defines 18 (all of which must be supported by a TV in order for it to be sold as an "HDTV")! One of those happens to include compressed, digitized NTSC...

Grease the palms of our honorable legislators enough, and it's not hard to get a sweet deal. And the networks are sitting on an incredibly sweet deal. First of all, they can decide which picture standard to use (ranging in quality from crappy NTSC to fullblown HDTV) assured that consumers have paid for the expensive decoder chips to watch whichever standard they choose to broadcast. Secondly, they can decide which mix of channels/services/etc. is the most profitable for them with no regulation whatsoever that forces them to use their spectrum for actually broadcasting HDTV. And they can do it all on free spectrum that otherwise would have cost them $70 billion (according to estimates of how much that spectrum would have fetched the government if it was auctioned)!

Are you feeling sick? Do you want to lead a consumer revolt by not buying HDTV sets? Don't worry; they have that covered too. In 10-15 years, by law, all NTSC broadcasts will be halted and everyone will be forced to switch over to HDTV. Unless you want to quit watching TV of any kind, you *must* purchase an HDTV set. Note how if you have a B&W T.V. from the 40's, you can still watch T.V. today, but 10 years from now, your NTSC set will be useless; why do you think they couldn't come up with a way to maintain backward compatibility when they were defining the HDTV standard? Or at least allow the market to determine the rate of HDTV acceptance as it saw fit? Perhaps because broadcasters knew that once people began to see that they essentially bought expensive new sets in order to watch the same crappy TV just so that the network companies could make more money off their spectrum, no one would buy HDTV sets and networks may have to continue broadcasting NTSC and miss out on all their extra profits...

So to segue back on-topic, broadcasters could care less about the quality of TV transmission and the details about penetration rates, signal quality, etc. etc. Because no matter how bad the transmission quality is, in 10 years, everyone will be forced to adopt the new standard anyway. And why should they care if half the people in their station area can't receive their TV signal and are thus not watching their advertising? They'll be making far more from all those extra services they'll be selling on their newfound $70 billion bandwidth horde...

I think this quote in the wired article about the FoF says it all:

"We will continue to vigorously contest the issues of this case in court, but at the same time we will continue to look for ways to resolve these issues in a fair and responsible manner," spokesman Jim Cullinan told Reuters.

Translation:

"We will continue to deny we broke the law in court, but at the same time we will continue to look for ways to be more subtle about how we do it in the future, including maybe cutting back a little until this blows over."

Chris

Wired News has it at http://www.wired.com/news/p olitics/0,1283,32361,00.html
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<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

• BBC Online
• Press Association
• Wired News
• Silicon Valley News
• Microsoft( hilarious)
• news.com
• ZDNetwork News
• The Industry Standard

  
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Here are some more stories about the case:

There's one in The NY Times, one in Wired, one on MSNBC, one on CNN and probably one on every other news site under the sun, but I just feel like giving a few more articles. It's always nice to get some more points of view.

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Reject

MicroSoft is supposedly planning to release a gaming system:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/991026 -000014.html

Didn't they learn from their DreamCast fiasco? Anyway, I'm predicting that this project will be killed anyway and if it does make the light of day it will be lackluster. It's way too late for MicroSoft to get into the game.

Sony is the clear winner in this space and the fact that they already have a base for connectivity with their consumer appliances makes them tough to beat. Sony is very serious about becoming not only the defacto standard for gaming but the defacto standard for home entertainment. They've been putting FireWire (a method of connecting media devices) into their digital cameras, PCs, Laptops, televisions, stereo components, etc.. The (MIPS-based) video chip in PlayStation has nothing that comes close to it. This could also be used to make a settop box out of the PlayStation II as well.

Let's also not forget that PlayStation I has about 80% market share. I believe the new PlayStation II will blow away the records set by DreamCast.

That said Sony is forecasting lower than expected earnings due to PlayStation's costs and competition:

http://dailynews.yaho o.com/h/nm/19991026/tc/japan_sony_1.html

I was hoping something like this would drive the stock down but I'm having no luck there. I guess no one's buying it. I'm not either.

You can read about Sony's plans in this month's Wired (which I still haven't read myself ).

"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."

They have removed it, yes?

No.

Western Digital is already doing this. Within the next month or two, their hard drives will ship full of encrypted software. You can buy any of these products (and get the decryption key) over the internet, basically avoiding a long download. As long as the software is easy to delete (they say it will be), I think this is a good idea (although free, unencrypted software would be better :). Hopefully it will reduce the cost of hard drives, because companies will pay WD to put their software on it.

When you get it, but not ask for it, it is NOT fine. Period. For example, I asked for mailings from Palm Computing. I did not ask for Real Network mailings of any kind (which it says so many places but one).

A Deja news search gives you the whole story, but just for the heck of it, Wired did a few stories on it: Is RealNetworks a RealSpammer? and RealNetworks Blacklisted Again . I also talked with the author before the last story about the "RealSpams" I got (and I remember not giving concent to 'em).

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Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack

When you get it, but not ask for it, it is NOT fine. Period. For example, I asked for mailings from Palm Computing. I did not ask for Real Network mailings of any kind (which it says so many places but one).

A Deja news search gives you the whole story, but just for the heck of it, Wired did a few stories on it: Is RealNetworks a RealSpammer? and RealNetworks Blacklisted Again . I also talked with the author before the last story about the "RealSpams" I got (and I remember not giving concent to 'em).

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Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack

There's also a Wired article on the subject :
http://www.wired.com/news/b usiness/0,1367,32154,00.html

It's interesting how various tiny nations have tried to cash in on the net.

Like Nauru, tuvalu is a tiny pacific island, the world's 4th smallest nation. Population : 10,000. When the internet boom began, tuvalu stood to make a fortune on the domain name trade - it's .TV country code was a potential goldmine (www.fox.tv ?)

What happened next was a sad tale of how a pacific nation, remote and unaware of the existence of the internet, was swindled by domain name sharks.

First, webTV grabbed admin. control of the .tv domain from ICANN without informing Tuvalu - further proof that webTV is evil incarnate. Tuvalu's prime minister came to know that something called the "Internet" existed after visiting Australia, and managed to get ICANN to hand them control.

Good wired story here.

Next, VCs and domain name companies descended on the remote island, courting the confused govt. Ultimately, Tuvalu signed a deal with a Canadian company, which failed to deliver the $50 million it had promised in a year (that's 10 times the country's entire GDP). Sad story.

Now Tuvalu, wiser and bitter, is still looking for a company to administer .TV and raise the nation's fortunes. Being honest religious folks, they don't want to do pr0n, shady financial deals, or anything unethical.

If only they could be like Nauru, with its offshore banking, or Niue, which hosts tons of porn on the .nu (naked in French) domain, or like Tonga, which sells $100 .to domains, no questions asked; they could improve their per capita income 10 times, but instead, they are fumbling in confusion.

I felt particularly sorry for them because they are so naive and quaint. It's a custom on the island to apologize if you walk past someone sitting, since the level of your head is higher than theirs. And hey, you can climb on top of the local church if you ask permission from the pastor. They're so naive their web site is a Yahoo Club.

Poor Tuvalu. Maybe the linux community can help them out by hosting their domain thingie and transforming their island. :)

w/m.

A device which plays both audio CDs and mp3 CD-ROMs was reported on Wired awhile ago.

The D'Music portable MP3/audio CD player, priced at US$299, will be available in November.
(believe it if you want)